Metacognitive Reading Awareness Among Freshmen EFL Students

Purpose. This study investigated the levels of three different strategies of metacognitive awareness: global reading strategy, problem-solving strategy, and support reading strategy among university students in a Business English class during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. The methodology is based on a survey, which was conducted among 192 freshman university students in their specialized courses of Business English as a foreign language. The research instrument was a metacognitive reading strategies awareness (MARSI) questionnaire. Results. The findings reveal that the students used problem-solving strategies the most, followed by global and support reading strategies the least. The results also indicate a difference between male and female students at individual levels of reading strategies. Conclusions. The study proposes a set of recommendations with an alliance of COVID-19 learning environment based on the results such as taking notes while reading and highlighting the most important information with an emphasis on details or showing the importance of previewing the text, asking questions/making predictions about the text, and most importantly paying attention to self-regulation practices in a new school environment.